Viva Republica, a South Korea-based financial services app developer backed by corporates Novel, PayPal and Qualcomm, has received $64m in a round led by investment manager Aspex Management, e27 reported today.
The deal round reportedly valued Viva at $2.2bn and also featured Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC along with venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins, Goodwater Capital, Sequoia Capital China and Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP).
Founded in 2011, Viva Republica has created a smartphone app called Toss that provides money management services to consumers and businesses. Toss started as a peer-to-peer money transfer platform but now also offers access to loan products, credit scoring, bank statements and insurance policies.
The app now has 13 million registered users, and Viva Republica will pursue further growth with the fresh capital, which brought its overall funding to more than $260m.
The company had raised $80m in December 2018 from investors including mobile semiconductor maker Qualcomm, which took part through its Qualcomm Ventures unit, telecommunications firm Novel and payment technology provider PayPal at a $1.2bn valuation.
The round also featured Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, prior to its split into Kleiner Perkins and Bond, as well as BVP, Goodwater and VC firms Altos Ventures and KTB Network.
Qualcomm Ventures had joined KTB, Altos and Goodwater in Viva Republica’s $23.7m series B round in 2016, before the latter two investors returned the following March for a $48m series C that was also backed by PayPal, BVP and Partech Ventures.
The series C round valued Viva Republica at more than $250m post-money and was followed by $40m in funding that was provided by GIC and Sequoia Capital China in June 2018.